


Forgiveness

by LyingMonsters



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Confessionals, Forgiveness, Historical, Italics, Longing, M/M, Unrequited Love, lietpol, slight homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 15:00:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14381103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyingMonsters/pseuds/LyingMonsters
Summary: Every twenty years, Feliks begs forgiveness in the dark confessionals, and he thinks of a boy he used to know better.





	Forgiveness

‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,’ Feliks whispered. He leaned his head against the screen. The priest wouldn’t be able to see him, not in this dark. It wrapped around them both, solid, real. Almost another person, standing beside them, listening, judging as Feliks offered up his love for a brown-haired boy and everything that had transpired in one horrible wonderful horrible night in a hope for forgiveness.

The nuns said the feeling in the dark booths was God, the atheists said it was blind belief, spouting science about the human brain. Feliks thought it was shame.

The priest was waiting, but Feliks closed his eyes and deepened the darkness just a moment more.

 _They couldn’t see anything, only feel each other’s breaths, hands finding hands in the utter, utter darkness. They try to grow used to each other again, but it is not easy after years apart._  
_‘You like it like this?’ Feliks asked. He would have motioned if not for their entangled hands and the pointlessness of the gesture (he would never stop holding Toris, scared someone would take him if Feliks ever let go). His eyes didn’t need to be open. Not even Toris’ cat-green stare could penetrate this darkness._  
_‘It’s the only way I can sleep,’ the Lithuanian explained almost ashamedly. Feliks had long since accepted his past with Russia, but Toris was long to believe and even longer to find comfort. Feliks had waited through it all, and his arms were Toris’ solace from the unforgiving cold._

‘Confess your sins, child,’ the priest urged. ‘What weighs upon you?’  
‘There’s a-a friend of mine. Their name is Toris. And we like, lost touch a long time ago, but we finally reunited a while back and…’  
The priest said nothing, but Feliks could feel the silently building accusation, the question that hovered on everybody’s lips for one reason or another; _male or female?_  
Feliks hated the question.  
‘...we slept together.’

_Feliks pulled him closer and when he closed his eyes, the lines and marks, everything that makes Toris’ skin his on his arms are once again visible on the inside of his eyelids. He traces them from memory._

_Sharing a bed was not new, exactly-they had been a commonwealth once, and their relationship had continued in varying intensity for a while after-but this was the first time it had been so innocent. For good reason, too. It had been a while. Toris looked different. His scars had healed somewhat, but Feliks knew he’d wear a shirt outside for the rest of his life._

_Feliks missed the times when Toris was above him, flushed and panting, the moments when they lost themselves in connection. It had been centuries since the last time they had gotten past foreplay. Not since their commonwealth, not since the partitions, not since Russia. Feliks missed it not because it felt good-though it did-it was because once, Toris took off his shirt and Feliks ran his hands over his back without fearing he’d tear open old wounds._

‘You slept with your _friend_ ,’ the priest clarified. Feliks scoffed quietly. He wants to say _I did_ , convince himself that Toris would.  
‘We shared a bed but we like, didn’t engage in that.’ He's quiet, wondering if he is bold enough to continue. ‘We touched each other.’  
‘And you were not married, this friend and you?’  
‘We like, used to be.’ And then, then they were beautiful, Toris was so beautiful and free.

 _‘Yeah, yeah.’ Feliks nuzzled closer with a smile. ‘I don’t mind, y’know. The darkness.’_  
_‘Any darkness?’ Toris asks, lips moving against the gentle swell of his bicep, the product of all his hours in the rye fields._  
_‘Not if you’re around.’ Feliks hummed. It passed for laughter in the darkness. ‘Like, cliche much. But it’s totally true.’ Truer than he could prove._

 _‘What if it’s mine? Do you mind it then?’ Toris asked quietly. Feliks gripped his hands tighter._  
_‘No, Toris. I-’ he broke off in irritation, searching for the perfect words, like he always needs to when people refuse to take him seriously. ‘Like, it’s part of you, it’s always gonna be part of you, and I love all of you. I wish you didn’t go through like, all that stuff with-him, but I-I can’t change history, and now it’s you. Your scars and your bedrooms and your darkness.’_

‘Are either of you married now?’ the priest inquires. Feliks is too tired to decide if it’s interest or disgust in his tone. He wonders if Toris ever tires of lying in restaurants. He probably does.  
‘No.’  
‘Did either of you take partners after you divorced?’  
‘Toris did,’ Feliks whispered. ‘His name was Ivan.’

 _His throat squeezes in that horrible way, and finally the invisible force snaps and it releases. The Pole has always been the silent crier; Toris is the motionless one._  
_‘Feliks…’ he murmured helplessly._  
_‘Like, don’t look at me,’ Feliks muttered. He tugged his hand away, and when he slid it back into Toris’, water still remained in the lines of his palm. ‘I can’t change history,’ he repeated, more to himself than anything. ‘No matter how much I claw at the walls to make the days stop turning forward and start turning back.’_

‘How is that important, anyways!’ Feliks barely manages to dim the shout to a snarl, the anger is sudden and suffocating. ‘Toris’ history is not your business. And it’s not mine, either.’

Feliks made it his business. He picked up and wondered about the pieces of Toris the Lithuanian allowed him to see, wished that he was allowed to hear Toris’ nightmares. If he could do that, maybe he could make them better.

He would find a way to make the nightmares better and to heal the scars so Toris would one day let Feliks see him again, see his beautiful body in its fullness, warm and solid, pressing against his skin everywhere (even if that was horribly, horribly selfish).

_Toris’ arms are almost crushing him, but Feliks doesn’t mind. He lets one hand grip Toris’ side, underneath his shirt, and breathes in the scent of his fine hair. His chest is tight. Another wave of horriblehorriblehorrible pain will surely drown him. But he survives, of course he does, and settles for gasping softly into Toris’ chest and rocking back and forth, both hands now clasped around one of his._

_‘Feliks,_ Feliks, I’m here _-what’s wrong?’_  
_‘Feels like I abandoned you,’ Feliks finally admits. The unforgiving weight on his chest goes nowhere. His words are choked. ‘Feel like I didn’t take it s-seriously. Thought Russia was just gonna-but I was wrong-and now-_ your scars _...’ His voice is interrupted by cracks, pitching so quiet or low that Toris can’t hear, and Feliks is secretly glad. He doesn’t know the words to make it all better, and the spaces they leave behind are full of silent accusation._

_He’d laughed when Russia hauled him away, sat there, sat by while Toris got scars and bruises and the light in his eyes went dark and he learned to lie perfectly._

_He’d_ laughed _, and the sound disgusted him when he was alone._

‘Is that all?’ the priest asked. Feliks leaned forward until his forehead pressed into the grate. It was so dark in the booths.  
‘No.’  
‘What else?’  
‘I didn’t apologize for divorcing Toris.’

Feliks says this every time.

Already, the nuns whisper in the pews about the boy who comes in every twenty years on October 24th (the date their commonwealth dissolved) and January 26th (the day they were cut up among the musician, the warrior, and the one who took Toris away-that is the only term Feliks will ever know him by), the boy who has not aged in centuries and will not for centuries more, who stands in the confessionals and whispers about loving a boy so dearly it hurts.

Feliks hears them and takes some confidence, some solace, some pride in that they will remember him and how much he loved and loves.

Even if their union of two nations was flawed (whose wasn’t?) even if the partition that broke them was only the last of three, even if Feliks wonders if he and Toris were ever really meant to be together-he misses him, and he is sorry.

_‘I’m sorry, Toris. I’m really so goddamn s-sorry.’ But ‘sorry’ isn’t enough, never will be, ‘sorry’ is for ignoring the story of his capital or maybe for the frantic calls, ‘sorry’ is for dragging him around and being stupid, ignorant, can’t-take-it-seriously Feliks. ‘Sorry’ does not make up for the scars or the reason Toris talks at restaurants, ‘sorry’ is not the balm to heal this beautiful boy’s damaged soul. But Feliks doesn’t have another bandage, and so he wears out ‘sorry’ on the things that apologies don’t fix._

_He is sorry for the suffering and the millions, he weeps for things past._

When it is late and Toris is still out at work as he is too often, Feliks reads books about how Lithuania was freed, years after it should have been. He sleeps with the words scholars know best in his mind, and those nights are restful.

_‘It’s okay.’ Toris’s hand smooths over his hip, along his back, until it cups his face. ‘It’s okay.’ The emptiest words of all. Used too much against unforgiving shields and shells and pasts, rubbed too hard, too often, too thin. They are covered in so many scars where they have ripped.  
‘Do you forgive me?’ Feliks asks desperately, suddenly. Accidentally._

The darkness is absolute.  
‘Do you regret it?’  
‘I will for a thousand lifetimes,’ Feliks whispers. The metal bites at his cheek. It is not an exaggeration.  
‘Regretting your sins-’ Why is it a sin? ‘-is the first step to forgiveness,’ the priest lectures. Feliks nods numbly, searching for patterns in the darkness. The word is familiar.  
‘Forgiveness…’ Feliks repeats, rolling the word on his tongue. It feels heavy, and Feliks holds it tightly.

_The darkness obscures, the darkness hides Toris’ green eyes and the twist of his lip that means disgust, and so Feliks must wait in the dark for his answer without seeing his face and knowing if he’s lying._

_(Toris lies beautifully. His voice does not crack, his tone does not waiver where it shouldn’t like Feliks’ does. But there is a dullness to his gaze when he looks the waiter in the eyes and tells her they’re just friends, and that dullness is especially prevalent for lies like these.)_

‘The ways life moves us is not your fault,’ the man continues. Feliks twitches suddenly, cringing away. His mind quietly repeats, _those words are a lie_.  
‘Not my fault,’ he begs, tries to believe. His head is pounding and he wants to leave, this part is always the worst.  
‘Your sins will be forgiven if you repent.’

_‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Toris answers. Empty words, empty words. Feliks feels empty. He couldn’t cry now if he wanted to. Toris’ thumb moves in gentle circles on his cheek, rubbing away the tears. Feliks squeezes his eyes shut uselessly and tells himself lies in an inner voice that shakes. Toris has not answered his question and Feliks needs, needs, hates the answer already._

_‘But do you_ forgive _me?’_

_In the silence, Feliks sees in his mind’s eye the curl of Toris’ lip and the resent that has finally surfaced in his eyes. ‘Toris, do you forgive me?’_

Repenting means giving Toris up. Repenting means accepting that he is wrong. Repenting is a glorious cleansing of his soul, but Feliks doesn’t want to if Toris will be washed away with all the rest.

How much of Toris has he repented now? How much has he given up? And he considers the words the priests always repeat, and wonders if they realize.

For even if his sins are forgiven...

_Toris doesn’t answer, and Feliks’ tears cease. He is not angry, just terribly numb. He has known for ages, ever since Toris hesitated before accepting him to sleep._

_Toris’ lips draw away from the pulse in his neck.  
‘Tell me I can stay with you tonight, at least,’ Feliks murmurs. ‘Please.’_

_Toris nods quietly in the darkness, and Feliks dreams of better times with the boy he loves next to him._

_The next question Feliks knew from the start he would never ask is stuck in his throat,_ Do you love me _will break both of them and Feliks is not cruel or destructive enough to make Toris answer_ No _._

...Feliks is not.

_Feliks should have run away then and there, but he will not. He will not run away, because he loves him. God, he loves Toris and always has. Though he doesn’t deserve him, isn’t right for him, can’t, won’t, doesn’t know how to fix him, Feliks loves him._

‘I repent my sins,’ Feliks breathes. The words taste bitter, and he presses closer into the metal grate, the cool metal a relief against his feverish skin.

He shouldn’t have given up, he should have given up.

He wants Toris back but it is too late and he is not forgiven.

_He loves Toris as he cries silently into his chest and is not forgiven (he deserves it)._

The priest repeats contrition, a prayer to rejoin (Feliks cannot think of anything but Toris when he says so), and allows him penance.  
‘...and you will be allowed into Heaven,’ he finishes. Feliks only catches the end, catches how he repeats the words without thinking. Even though it has been twenty years, he remembers.

 _‘One day,’ Toris wrote in his letter, surreal, like it’s a story. Feliks only hazily acknowledges it. ‘One day everything will get better. With some Paradise up in the sky, like you say.’  
‘Heaven. Damn heaven, I left it all behind,’ Feliks mutters. Left the words in ink on thin pages that said his want was wrong, _ wrongwrongwrong _in every way, left the preachers in their pulpits whose eyes were always accusing, left the confessional booths where he always had too much to say. Left it when his priests told him that his God would not forgive his sins if they were kept, and so he left the stained glass and the hymns and the prayers behind instead. He always comes back, anyways, when he thinks he won’t be recognized, and begs for forgiveness in the dark confessional booths._

 _For his God is merciful, certainly, and will understand why Feliks left_ because he couldn’t stand the words they preached and Toris forgave that. _He will understand why Feliks couldn’t follow the words written in the book_ because they accused him and Toris forgave that.

 _He will understand how deeply and desperately Feliks loved a boy with brown hair and green eyes and calluses all over his hands_ because he hated the stares of the people who asked about his hair and his clothes and Toris forgave that.

 _His God will understand why Feliks couldn’t leave him_ because of all the things Toris forgave, Feliks was not and will never be one of them _._

_His God will understand, his God will forgive him for everything._

_He must._

‘Thank you, Father,’ Feliks murmurs.

 _Toris never said_ I forgive you _that night and never had the morning after, or ever again._

_The next night, Feliks retreated to a different bedroom and locked the door. Toris did not knock._

_Then one day, Feliks had come back to a letter speaking of Heaven and explaining that his boss needed him back home in Lithuania. Urgently. And Feliks tore that note with its unhurried writing to shreds and screamed, screamed at the universe and at Russia and himself until the drinks turned his pain and anger to Toris and how he couldn’t let things go, couldn’t forgive. And so he told him. Feliks hated those words bitterly the next morning, but in the moment, he didn’t regret them at all._

_The next day, standing in a dark confessional, Feliks took solace in the fact that his voice was unrecognizable from raspy hurt and slurred drunkenness._

_Feliks was not forgiven._

‘You may go,’ the priest commands, and Feliks jerks upright. His hand collides with the door and his foot catches, sending him to his hands and knees. The skin is scraped and stings dully. The world outside is too bright, too starkly different from the dark confessional and the dark bedroom and the dark ink in all those condemning, unforgiving words.

The priest said he was forgiven.

Feliks gets up and stumbles out and runs, runs, runs.

**Author's Note:**

> LietPol and how it has so much of the ‘apart-and-together’ that requires so much from both of them is almost a debate for me. I either see them in the end-of-the-road utopia, so to speak, happy and content with what they’ve done, or more though-it-could-be-better that has no feasible end. 
> 
> :: Wax melting, dripping down a curved surface, hardening almost too fast


End file.
